If commuter railroads dropped the price of an intracity ticket to $2.75 and increased service between 7 a.m. So there are more reasons than ever to do this.” “If fares are not made affordable for city residents, and if frequency isn’t useful, we’re not really like maximizing the potential of all of this infrastructure. “There’s really substantial new capacity on the LIRR, and there’s a real project to build to build new Metro-North stations in the Bronx,” said TransitCenter Director of Research Steven Higashide. The question of what to do with intracity commuter rail is also more pressing because the city is currently expanding service on both the LIRR and Metro-North with a pair of big infrastructure projects: The LIRR is going to begin running trains to Grand Central any day now, and Metro-North will begin running trains from Westchester and Rockland to Penn Station (plus and four New Haven line stops in the Bronx) when the MTA finishes the Penn Access project in 2027. Those suburban riders are still not coming back, and aren’t projected to ever come back in the same numbers as before the pandemic, so researchers say now is a great time to change how the MTA uses its railroads. The idea has been kicked around for years now, but the TransitCenter report, Renewing the New York Railroads, makes the case that the LIRR and Metro-North can and should function more like Paris and London’s regional railroads instead of relying on New York’s old model as suburban railroads solely serving commuters between Long Island or upstate and Midtown Manhattan. Ridership on the MTA’s suburban railroads remains well below its pre-pandemic numbers, so the time has never been better for the agency to offer $2.75 fares for trips within the five boroughs, just as the agency does on its subway and buses (which are intra-city transit systems run by the very same agency, by the way). The MTA should offer intracity trips on the Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North for the same price as a subway ride not only because it’s fair, but also because it will boost ridership on the struggling commuter rail lines, a new report argues. It’s our December donation drive! Click the logo for info or use the cool widget on the top right of this page (or at the bottom of this post if you are on mobile).
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